


Indifference

by spittingfeathers



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, sansa is 21, stannis is 35
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:02:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5439338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spittingfeathers/pseuds/spittingfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had said he would not hurt her, but hurt can come from many places and this was not something Sansa had considered when she asked for his protection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He had said he would not hurt her, but hurt can come from many places and this was not something Sansa had considered when she asked for his protection. Love had always been something to embrace, never did she think loving her husband would cause her pain. 

The King was not a warm man, nor jovial, nor particularly friendly. He did his duty and that was that. 

When she had made her enquiries about The King she hadn’t thought they meant quite so literally. 

They had married because he needed to gain a firm hold over the North after her brother had been found, and she needed him for protection. It was not a love match, and like most marriages between Lords and Ladies was one of convenience. 

Sansa had agreed because no one would dare challenge Stannis Baratheon after his sound defeat of the Wildlings, The Boltons, The Lannisters and Tyrells, and even the Others of whom tales would be told for generations to come. 

He said he would not hurt her, but the cold, stiff indifference was killing her. 

Sansa had come to appreciate his blunt manner of speaking and sharp wit. The way he behaved with Shireen and how he had instated her on the Small Council to hear and be heard. How he listened to her ideas and concerns and how he started work early and finished late but always made time for her to speak with him should she wish to. 

Loving your husband was not a bad thing, but in this case, Sansa would have rather been indifferent as he was to her for it would have been much less painful.

She had grown desperate for his affection, his regard, his time. She came to him during the day to ask if she could assist him, made sure he ate something at meal times, often bringing Shireen with her for dinner, and even tried to coax him to sleep in her bed.

When they did their duty, more often than not Sansa would kiss him, try and draw the passion out. It was there, she had felt it once, when he let go of his control and thrust strongly, groaning lowly into her hair as he held a breast in one hand and her hip with his other. She longed to feel it again, to know that he was not truly indifferent to her.

Sansa kissed his neck, his face, his lips. She held his hand and gripped his shoulders and hips as he moved inside her. She tossed her head back and moaned and made sure to let him know how she lusted for him through her body when she could not articulate through her words. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and when he finished, each time, she tried to get him to stay. 

Sometimes he left, sometimes he lay there stiffly, but either way he was always gone when she woke up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stannis' perspective. nsfw

It was for convenience. He needed the North and she needed his protection. He never would have thought at any point in their arrangement that she would need him so fiercely in other things too. Sansa arrived at mealtimes and sat with him while he ate, offered her help with additional duties and correspondence to those who preferred a more flowery language. She sat with Shireen and helped bring his shy daughter out of her shell. The servants doted on Sansa who made sure that all were well and had everything they needed, and in turn, they offered information about the Keep and its inhabitants. It was a joke often made by Davos that Sansa knew more than the Master of Whisperers. 

Sansa was by all accounts the perfect wife and Queen. 

Her insistence on doing their duty constantly surprised and inflamed him. Sansa invited him to stay in her bed night after night. Perhaps it was just her way of ensuring he did not stray — that he would be so addicted to her scent, her feel and the sounds she made, that he would do all he could to protect her and what she gave him. With Selyse it had been once a month at most when he was at Dragonstone, longer if he was away. With Sansa it had become once a week. There was no sign of a child yet, but with the frequency they now coupled Stannis was hopeful that it would not be long.

He had never slept so well either and as the days went on, including the meals she brought and ate with him, he began to look and feel healthier. The dark circles beneath his eyes began to lighten and he was now more than muscle and bone. 

Stannis supposed it was warmth of her skin and the way his own breathing began to match the slow even breaths she made against his side that lulled him to sleep. When she persuaded him to stay and she fell asleep before him, he watched as the worries slipped away as she sunk into dreams.

Sometimes he wonders what his life would have been like if he had been made Lord of Storm’s End and Sansa had been his first wife — had she been born years earlier or he later. Perhaps her attempts at fooling herself into believing her affection for him would be just the same, or if they would have been more successful. He can see it in the falseness of her smiles and her wish to draw him in. Attempting to be happy with a man she would have never chosen before. However her smiles to visiting Lords and simpering Courtiers are dull in comparison and she shows no preference for any handsome fop who flatters her. 

She has been hurt, he knows, at the hands of Joffrey and Petyr Baelish, both sought to make her their plaything and set her ablaze to warm themselves. But they could not control the way she burned. Brighter. Hotter. Far fiercer and stronger than anyone had ever expected until they turned to ash at her feet. The Vale then in her power and Winterfell retaken when they joined their forces she had been stronger than many had given her credit for. 

Finding her brother meant that her marriage to someone who had no need of her lands was crucial. It just so happened that  _ he _ was that man. He had been reluctant. His line was safe in his daughter and he had little wish to enter into another marriage that was bound to be as miserable as his first - it was not his personality that recommended him.

She cries out when he takes her, always slow and measured until she mutters those words. The ones that make him relinquish all control.  _ Take me. Fuck me. Come inside.  _ The words are almost depraved, and filthy, said in the Queen’s own voice high with pleasure.  _ Fill me with your seed.  _ The words are set at such a contrast with her usual fine manners and politeness that it makes him impossibly hard, his eyes almost crossing with the force of pleasure she brings him. His hips smack against hers, flesh meeting flesh, and her nails dig crescent moons into his skin from the force of her feeling. 

_ I want to have your children. _

It is this last one that always makes him come. The thought of her, full and round with his child, her breasts swelling to fill with milk to feed the baby to come. She would be radiant in her pregnancy and the best mother. He finishes inside her with little more than a low groan, sweat building on his forehead, back and neck. He stays inside as long as he dares before it becomes unseemly and reluctantly pulls out. 

Some said love made men weak, and before, Stannis might have agreed. Davos would have said that his Queen makes him stronger, and looking at her as she turns and holds her legs up against the wall by the headboard — a technique to help his seed take root, recommended by the Maester — her smile undoes him. He has never felt such a terrible mixture of pain, pleasure and guilt in his chest at once. All three are caused by her bond to him. He won’t delude himself and think that she wants him truly, nor that she would have ever chosen him to sire her children if she had not needed to…and yet he resists holding her closer, kissing every inch of her skin and confessing the effect she has on him because it would be cruel. To both of them. He will do what is right none the less and so when they wash, and she tucks herself back beneath their covers watching as he hesitantly joins her, he waits until she falls asleep before he retires to his own bed. It is colder and far less comfortable for her absence.

Stannis knows he has not been the best husband, nor has he been the best father for Shireen, but when he works long into the night and wakes early to start the next day he knows he does everything he can to be the best King. He can stabilise the realm for his daughter and make it safe for his wife. 

Stannis’ duty is all he has, and all he can give, for they deserve better than him though he will hold fast to them both.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> errr...where has the christmas break gone? Hope you all had a good one and have a great New Year!

**Author's Note:**

> I am still alive though I have christmas break soon and should be able to write more than one shots - I'm looking forward to FINISHING something!


End file.
